Securing customer virtual machines in a multi-tenant cloud

A non-transitory machine readable storage medium for securing virtual machines in a multi-tenant data center including a plurality of server computers and persistent data stores, the machine readable storage medium having computer instructions encoded thereon causing a computer configured as a trusted virtualization platform to perform a method, the method comprising:

• receiving a request for a key to run a virtual machine on a server computer configured with an attestation module, the key request initiated by a request for a virtual machine received at the server computer, the key request including a customer ID associated with the virtual machine;
• in response to the key request, requesting the server computer for static property measurements of a software stack on top which the virtual machine will be run, the static property measurements stored in the attestation module on the server computer;
• receiving the static property measurements stored in the attestation module from the server computer;
• confirming from the static property measurements that the software stack is a trusted software stack by verifying that the static property measurements stored in the attestation module match an expected value and, after said confirming, transmitting to the server computer the key to run the virtual machine on the server computer;
• receiving a request to execute a management operation on the virtual machine;
• and
• creating an audit trail by storing the requested management operation.

The machine readable storage medium of 13, wherein the method further comprises:

• receiving a public key of the attestation module from the server computer;
• and
• searching for the public key in an inventory associated with the multi-tenant data center,
• wherein the key to run the virtual machine on the server computer is transmitted to the server computer after it is confirmed that the public key has been found in the inventory of associated with the multi-tenant data center.

The machine readable storage medium of 13, wherein the method further comprises:

• receiving a request to transmit a network packet to another virtual machine running in a different server computer;
• confirming that the different server computer is running a trusted software stack and said another virtual machine is running on top of the trusted software stack;
• and
• upon said confirming, transmitting to the server computer a key for encrypting the network packet to be transmitted to said another virtual machine.

A multi-tenant data center system comprising:

• a plurality of server computers, each of which is configured with a trusted platform module (TPM) and a trusted virtualization platform having one or more software layers on top of which a virtual machine is to be executed;
• and
• a persistent storage system coupled to the server computers, in which files for launching the virtual machine are stored, the files including an encrypted portion and a plain text portion that identifies a customer and a network location associated with the customer,
• wherein the trusted virtualization platform is programmed to:
• create an audit trail by reporting any changes to the trusted virtualization platform to the network location associated with the customer;
• in response to receiving a request for a virtual machine, obtain one or more keys from the network location associated with the customer to decrypt the encrypted portion of the files for launching the customer application, the one or more keys obtained by transmitting one or more measurements stored in the TPM to the network location and receiving the one or more keys if the one or more measurements match expected values in the network location;
• receiving a request to execute a management operation on the virtual machine;
• and
• adding the requested management operation to the audit trail by sending the management operation to the network location associated with the customer.